Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 332: Thu Nov 28

The House with Laughing Windows (Avati, 1976): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.30pm


This 35mm screening is part of the Terror Vision strand at BFI Southbank — you can find all the details of the regular programme strands at the cinema here.

Eye For Film review:
The House with Laughing Windows makes for a classic giallo, with its psychosexual intrigues, brutal slayings and imaginative twists - but, apart from the film's blood-soaked opening, Pupi Avati largely dispenses with giallo's usual baroque grand guignol (typified in the lurid works of Mario Bava, Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci). Rather, his slow build-up of paranoid tension is more akin to the Tenant-era heyday of Roman Polanski, with the horror playing itself out more in the mind than on the screen. The unnerving results are a cut above your average giallo - and a million miles from giallo's poor Hollywood relation, the slasher. In short, Avati puts the art back into murder.
Anton Bitel

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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